The lawyer for the family of slain child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey denounced a CBS documentary theorizing she was killed by her brother, Burke, as a “false and unprofessional television attack” and threatened to sue the network for libel.
L. Lin Wood, an Atlanta attorney who said he had successfully sued other media outlets over similar accusations against Burke Ramsey, branded the program as a broadcast riddled with “lies, misrepresentations, distortions and omissions.”
“I will be filing a lawsuit on behalf of Burke Ramsey,” Wood told Reuters in a telephone interview. “CBS’ false and unprofessional attacks on this young man are disgusting and revolting.”

The network responded to Wood with a terse statement: “CBS stands by the broadcast and will do so in court.”
The two-part, four-hour program aired amid a wave of media coverage surrounding the 20th anniversary of the JonBenet Ramsey case, one of the most sensational unsolved murders in the annals of American crime.
The body of the blond, blue-eyed girl, who had been beaten and strangled, was found in the basement of her parents’ Boulder, Colorado, home on Dec. 26, 1996, hours after her parents reported the 6-year-old child missing and a ransom note left in the house.
No one has been charged with her murder. A grand jury voted in 1999 to indict the parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, but then-District Attorney Alex Hunter declined to file charges, citing a lack of evidence.

In the conclusion of the CBS show that aired on Monday, a panel of experts said it was its opinion that Burke Ramsey, who was 9 at the time of the homicide, struck his sister in the head with a heavy object, perhaps not intending to kill her.
The girl’s parents then staged a crime scene to make it appear that an intruder was the culprit, the group of law enforcement, forensic pathologists and other experts concluded.
Wood called CBS “corporate profit mongers” who aired the program during the September sweeps for maximum ratings benefit.In a recent interview on the “Dr. Phil” talk show, Burke Ramsey, now 29, denied that he harmed his sister, and said he suspected a pedophile who stalked child beauty pageants was the killer.
Wood said a written disclaimer that CBS aired with its show, saying the opinions “represent just some of a number of possible scenarios,” did not go far enough.

"The wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. He is in front of it."...Axel Munthe

In the conclusion of the CBS show that aired on Monday, a panel of experts said it was its opinion that Burke Ramsey, who was 9 at the time of the homicide, struck his sister in the head with a heavy object, perhaps not intending to kill her.
The girl’s parents then staged a crime scene to make it appear that an intruder was the culprit, the group of law enforcement, forensic pathologists and other experts concluded.

This seems like a really dumb, counter-intuitive theory. One of your precious children hits the other beloved child, possibly fatally, and your reaction is not to call a hospital, but to further brutalize the other child's body and then subject both of you (parents) to criminal conspiracy charges?

I saw some segments of that Dr. Phil interview with Burke on youtube, and his smile and grimacing is thoroughly disturbing. I mean, I know all about how it can be a nervous anxiety response and not indicative of guilt, but it really doesn't feel like it. If I were him and knew this is what I looked like on camera talking about this, I would definitely not have done the interview.

This seems like a really dumb, counter-intuitive theory. One of your precious children hits the other beloved child, possibly fatally, and your reaction is not to call a hospital, but to further brutalize the other child's body and then subject both of you (parents) to criminal conspiracy charges?

Criminal Minds did an episode based on this very theory, except it was two brothers and the older brother killed the younger brother and showed absolutely no remorse because he was a sociopath. And the parents covered it all up.

I saw some segments of that Dr. Phil interview with Burke on youtube, and his smile and grimacing is thoroughly disturbing. I mean, I know all about how it can be a nervous anxiety response and not indicative of guilt, but it really doesn't feel like it. If I were him and knew this is what I looked like on camera talking about this, I would definitely not have done the interview.

There is no way that a sibling of Jon Benet Ramsey would have a chance at having some kind of normal existence, and I wouldn't be surprised if the toll on him manifested itself in all kinds of weird ways.

Why would they need to cover it up, though? The theory was that it was an accident. That would not have resulted in a criminal charge for a child Burke's age. I can't think of a criminal case where one child killed of grievously wounded another and the parents invented an elaborate charade that involved them further mutilating their own child's body.

This seems like a really dumb, counter-intuitive theory. One of your precious children hits the other beloved child, possibly fatally, and your reaction is not to call a hospital, but to further brutalize the other child's body and then subject both of you (parents) to criminal conspiracy charges?

That's what I've always thought. If you watch this documentary, i'd like to get your review afterwards.

There are things I didn't know about the case until i saw this doc cause i've seen a few, assuming that the investigator in the house that day, a former housekeeper, and a friend of the family are telling the truth in this doc.

Because they panicked? Because nothing else makes sense. Like someone else said, the intruder theory just requires way too much suspension of disbelief.

I can believe an intruder theory more than the brother doing it and the parents covering it up. There was a murder case where a woman was murdered in her house by an intruder who was a complete stranger. At first, police thought it was the husband. There were very few clues to go on because they couldn't come up with a motive for anyone else.

However, what turned out to have happened was that a guy who had been convicted of raping his 3-month-old daughter was about to be sent to prison for like 15 years, and he decided it would be better to murder someone and eventually get caught for it and he was hoping to be known in prison as a "murderer" than a "child rapist". That is the kind of disordered and random thinking of an actual rapist and murderer, as opposed to parents who had no history of doing anything remotely like this.

^^i used to think that too until this doc. Even at the beginning of this thread I thought it was an intruder because of docs I've seen before which confirmed everything I always thought. But just last week this doc changed my mind. If you can catch it On Demand, check it out. There's a few docs about this out right now so make sure it's the CBS "The Case of JonBenet." I'd be very curious to see if you still feel this way.

There are distinct similarities in patsy's handwriting and the ransom note. That was on another doc, not this one, but it's just too big of a coincidence for me to believe that her and a kidnapper just happened to have the same uniquely flawed q and letter c.

I saw some segments of that Dr. Phil interview with Burke on youtube, and his smile and grimacing is thoroughly disturbing. I mean, I know all about how it can be a nervous anxiety response and not indicative of guilt, but it really doesn't feel like it. If I were him and knew this is what I looked like on camera talking about this, I would definitely not have done the interview.

You should have watched burkes interviews after the murder. That was odd and disturbing.